ODHS Child Welfare Reform
Exposing the Truth Behind Oregon’s Child Welfare Crisis

Reform Oregon's Child Welfare Policies to Protect Families and Ensure Civil Liberties

Oregon’s child welfare system needs transformative change. Families are being torn apart under policies that prioritize bureaucracy over evidence-based solutions. This petition calls for critical reforms inspired by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) to protect families, ensure civil liberties, and promote fairness and transparency.
Purpose
Core Reforms
Why This Reform Matters
Supporting Evidence
ODHS Child Welfare Division Progress Report (October 2023)

Purpose

To prioritize family preservation, transparency, accountability, and evidence-based practices in Oregon’s child welfare system, ensuring fairness and protecting civil liberties.
Evidence

Purpose

To prioritize family preservation, transparency, accountability, and evidence-based practices in Oregon’s child welfare system, ensuring fairness and protecting civil liberties.

Core Reforms

1. Transparency in Hearings and Records
  • Open all child welfare court hearings and records to the public by default, with exceptions only for severe harm proven by clear and convincing evidence.
  • Allow child welfare agencies to comment freely on cases made public by any other source to ensure balanced narratives and accountability.Deliveries in all other countries: three to six working days.
2. Raising Evidentiary Standards
  • Apply the "clear and convincing evidence" standard to all stages of child welfare proceedings, including removal, foster care decisions, and substantiating allegations.
  • Require detailed judicial findings to justify removals, emphasizing preventive efforts and reasoning based on solid evidence.
3. Ensuring Quality Legal Representation
  • Guarantee interdisciplinary defense teams for families facing CPS investigations, including lawyers, social workers, and parent advocates.
  • Provide representation from the moment CPS begins investigating a case, ensuring families have support before court proceedings.
  • Require guardians ad litem (GALs) to advocate for the expressed wishes of children they represent, rather than solely what GALs believe is in the child’s “best interests.”
4. Restricting CASA’s Role
  • Limit Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) to mentoring foster children and locating extended family for kinship care placements.
5. Screening and Reporting Improvements
  • Replace mandatory reporting laws with permissive reporting to encourage genuine suspicions while reducing false or frivolous reports.
  • Shift from anonymous reporting to confidential reporting, discouraging misuse while protecting the identity of reporters.
  • Establish rational screening protocols for child abuse hotlines to ensure cases meet a reasonable threshold of suspicion before investigation.
6. Reforming Registries
  • Prohibit listing individuals in central registries of alleged child abusers without an administrative hearing conducted by an independent officer.
  • Apply the "clear and convincing evidence" standard for substantiating allegations before adding names to registries.
  • Mandate the expungement of records for unfounded reports within 30 days to prevent harassment and misuse.
7. Supporting Families and Reducing Trauma
  • Mandate daily supervised visits between children and their families from the moment of removal until the first court hearing, unless proven harmful by clear and convincing evidence.
  • Prohibit practices akin to legal ransom that require parents to reimburse the state for foster care costs as a condition for reunification.
8. Repealing Harmful Legislation
  • Repeal the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), removing mandates that contribute to systemic failures and unnecessary family separations.
  • Repeal the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which perpetuates racial and class biases while increasing unnecessary removals.
9. Promoting Humility in Policy Language
  • Replace the phrase "best interests of the child" with "least detrimental alternative" in all child welfare laws and policies, emphasizing the harm of intervention and the need to minimize it.

Why This Reform Matters

Family Preservation Over Foster Care
  • Research from NCCPR demonstrates that children left with their families, even with minimal support, often fare better than those placed in foster care, which is overused and causes long-term harm.
Accountability and Transparency
  • Opening hearings and records ensures fairer outcomes, reduces misuse of power, and allows families to challenge wrongful decisions effectively.
Evidence-Based Solutions
  • Proven strategies like interdisciplinary defense teams and rational hotline screening focus resources on real cases, preventing systemic overload and supporting families in crisis.

Supporting Evidence

1. Transparency in Hearings and Records
2. Raising Evidentiary Standards
Success stories from New York City, Washington State, and Illinois highlight the effectiveness of family defense teams and community-based prevention efforts.
Studies consistently show that children suffer more harm from unnecessary foster care placements than remaining with their families.
To see State, Local, and International Reports and Presentations, click here
3. Foster Care vs. Keeping Families Together: The Definitive Studies
For a printable pdf tap the image or click here
Successful alternatives to taking children from their families.
5. Civil Liberties without Exception
NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for Children and Families
6. False Allegations: What the Data Really Show
92% of all children subjected to allegations of child abuse deemed false
ISSUE PAPERS
Family Preservation, Foster Care and Reasonable Efforts
Introduction1. Foster Care vs. Family Preservation: The Track Record on Safety2. Foster Care Panics3. They “Erred on the Side of the Child” — Case Histories4. Emotional Abuse5. Who is in “The System”6. More About Family Policing and Poverty7. Family Policing and Race8. Understanding Child Abuse Fatalities9. The Unreasonable Assault on “Reasonable Efforts”10. What is “Family Preservation?”11. Does Family Preservation Work?12. Financial Incentives13. Family Policing and Substance Use14. Family Preservation and Adoption15. Just Say No to the Orphanage16. The Failure of Mandatory Reporting

ODHS Child Welfare Division Progress Report (October 2023)

These statistics highlight both the challenges and progress within Oregon's child welfare system. They emphasize the need for continued reforms to reduce unnecessary interventions, improve efficiency, and prioritize family preservation.
1. High Volume of Unnecessary Contacts
Only 26% of contacts received by the Oregon Child Abuse Hotline (ORCAH) result in a CPS assignment. This means the majority of calls do not require child welfare intervention, highlighting inefficiencies in the system.
2. Low Rate of Foster Care Entries
Out of thousands of reports, only a small fraction lead to children entering foster care. For example, in September 2023, 187 children entered foster care, compared to 7,488 reports of abuse received. This underscores the importance of managing cases with community and family resources rather than removal.
3. Timeliness of Case Plans
For the first time, 77% of case plans were completed within the federally required 60-day timeframe in July 2023. This is a significant improvement, with 12 of 16 districts meeting or exceeding the 70% goal.
4. Temporary Lodging as a Last Resort
Over the past year, 73% of children and young adults at risk of temporary lodging (e.g., hotels) were diverted to other services, showing progress in finding appropriate placements.
5. Decline in Oregon Foster Care Numbers
The number of children in foster care continues to decline, with 3,756 children in care as of September 2023, compared to 7,691 in December 2018. This reflects efforts to prioritize family preservation.
6. Recurrence of Maltreatment in Oregon:
The recurrence rate of maltreatment has remained low, with 10.6% of children experiencing maltreatment within 12 months, close to the national standard of 9.1%
Read the full report.

Take Action to Reform Oregon's Child Welfare System!

Oregon families deserve better. Our current child welfare policies are tearing families apart, prioritizing bureaucracy over evidence-based solutions. Together, we can change this. This petition calls for critical reforms inspired by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) to protect families, ensure transparency, and promote fairness.
Sign the Petition Now: By signing, you are standing up for family preservation, advocating for justice, and helping to eliminate unnecessary interventions in Oregon’s child welfare system.
Make Your Voice Heard: Every signature brings us closer to implementing policies that prioritize keeping families together, promote accountability, and reduce harm to children.
Let’s make history. Oregon has the chance to lead the nation in child welfare reform—sign today and be part of the change!